Building on our operational model, we will discuss findings from our ethnographic study titled, "The Impact of Catastrophic Injury Exposure on Resilience in Special Operations Surgical Teams," to establish that optimal grief-processing allows Special Operation Forces (SOF) medics to alchemize the intense pain of loss into a pliant palliative posture that shows conscientious concern for others across the deployment cycle. To achieve our goals, we will: 1) provide a brief background on contemporary bereavement studies, death-stacking, and historical grief-processing; 2) define the social determinant of grief-processing as extrapolated from qualitative data; and 3) use qualitative data to thematize various grief processes. We conclude by gesturing to how grief-processing galvanizes SOF medic equanimity amid death discernment, which emphasizes the human fragility inherent in all SOF missions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBuilding on our strategic framework and operational model, we will discuss findings from our ethnographic study entitled, "The Impact of Catastrophic Injury Exposure on Resilience in Special Operations Surgical Teams (SOST)." Our goal is to establish that medical-martial creativity supports Special Operation Forces (SOF) medics' ability to fluidly modulate pressure amid real-time military medical decision-making in austere environments. We will use qualitative quotes to explore how SOST medics express medical-martial creativity in support of unconventional resilience.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBuilding upon our strategic framework and operational model, we will discuss findings from our ethnographic study, entitled: "The Impact of Catastrophic Injury Exposure on Resilience in Special Operations Surgical Teams (SOSTs)," to explain the tactical nature and importance of social determinants within our new characterization of unconventional resilience. Our fourth paper in this series, will explain how bonding patterns establish the quality of intra- and interpersonal connections that create a tensive conduit for the pressure of performance within our operational model, allowing for dynamic freedom of maneuver to take place in ambiguity. We will use qualita- tive quotes to illustrate various ways SOST medics relate to themselves, other people, and the Special Operations Forces (SOF) culture.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBuilding upon our operational model, we will discuss findings from our ethnographic study titled "The Impact of Catastrophic Injury Exposure on Resilience in Special Operations Surgical Teams" to establish that impression management allows Special Operation Forces (SOF) medics to navigate implicit social status symbols to either degrade or optimize performance. We will use qualitative quotes to explore how Special Operations Surgical Team (SOST) medics engage in impression management to establish individual, team, and/or organizational competency to deal with ambiguity. To achieve our goals, we will: 1) provide a background on impression management and perception of competency; 2) define the social determinant of impression management extrapolated from qualitative data as well as use qualitative data to thematize various types of impression management; and 3) relate tactical engagement with impression to our metaphor of bag sets.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF